Snapshot Metrics Are Not Enough: Analyzing Software Repositories with Longitudinal Metrics
Abstract
Software metrics capture information about software development processes and products. These metrics support decision-making, e.g., in team management or dependency selection. However, existing metrics tools measure only a snapshot of a software project. Little attention has been given to enabling engineers to reason about metric trends over time -- longitudinal metrics that give insight about process, not just product. In this work, we present PRiME (PRocess MEtrics), a tool for computing and visualizing process metrics. The currently-supported metrics include productivity, issue density, issue spoilage, and bus factor. We illustrate the value of longitudinal data and conclude with a research agenda. The tool's demo video can be watched at https://youtu.be/YigEHy3_JCo. The source code can be found at https://github.com/SoftwareSystemsLaboratory/prime.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2207.11767,
title = {Snapshot Metrics Are Not Enough: Analyzing Software Repositories with Longitudinal Metrics},
author = {Nicholas Synovic and Matt Hyatt and Rohan Sethi and Sohini Thota and Shilpika and Allan J. Miller and Wenxin Jiang and Emmanuel S. Amobi and Austin Pinderski and Konstantin Läufer and Nicholas J. Hayward and Neil Klingensmith and James C. Davis and George K. Thiruvathukal},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.11767},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
Accepted at ASE 2022 Tool Demonstrations